


The Drawing of the Prime

by mary_pseud



Series: Damnatio Memoriae [16]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Don't copy to other sites, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-19 05:51:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19969084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mary_pseud/pseuds/mary_pseud
Summary: A rejuvenated Davros watches as the aliens who have conquered Skaro search for a Prime to complete them.





	1. Incoming

Davros looked over the Kaled capital city. This was his kingdom, he supposed. Pity that there was so little to it.

"What does this remind you of?" he asked the woman beside him, and she leaned a little forward, putting one hand on the window's edge, and looked down.

There were buildings of every size spread out below them, almost all of them dark and empty. The streets between those buildings were empty as well, lit only by the scattered flickering lights of particle fountains. In the distance was the thrumming of powerful pumps, sucking in air and sending it through multiple decontamination filters. Here and there were tiny pockets of light: barracks, hospitals, the power wells that drew geothermal energy from the planet's crust, salvage operations. But most of the people and the power in the Kaled city were clustered near the entrances to the Dome. A thin line of life and light encircling an empty core, all covered by a great arching Dome of translucent white, threaded with twisting bands of silver that looked uncannily like veins. There were literally not enough Kaleds to occupy their own city - and would not be for some centuries.

"It looks like an eye," continued Davros. "A great black blind eye."

"It reminds me of a gem," said Security Liaison Esselle, with a hint of a smile. "Some rare, subtle gem, whose edges catch fire. You would wear it on a dress, something black and flowing, and people would have to come close to see the tiny lines of fire through it." She touched her fingers to her own chest, as though to show where the gem would be worn.

"It's nothing like a gem, where do you get these notions?" said Davros disagreeably. His tone made it clear that he expected no answer.

It was rather strange to be so high in the air and still be under a roof. Davros was at the top of the Kaled Dome; more specifically in a chamber that clung to the Dome's underside like a beetle or a blister. This chamber had been used for many things: maintenance, defence, surveillance, liaisons, executions. Now it was stripped bare of instrument and ornament, and held only a computer terminal, some chairs, and a large vat suitable for the growing of a humanoid body. And it held him, of course, and the alien woman.

"I am not bait!" he fretted, moving from the window and pacing back and forth, his feet scuffing against the rough floor tiles.

"No, Davros," soothed Esselle, adjusting the collar of her uniform. "You are the pinnacle of Kaled neural achievement, the greatest thinker and scientist your race has ever produced. You are what we came here for, Davros. If there is another master copy of the Reflection out there, and it passes within range…"

She laid her gloved hand on the edge of the support vat. Stroked it, like it was a friend.

Davros studied her broodingly. She was one of myriad female Reflectionists that now worked in the Kaled Dome and in the Bunker. And it was thanks to the unstinting labour and support of these Reflectionists that Davros now walked on two feet and saw out of two eyes, so he supposed he could afford to spare a few evenings a week in sitting at the focus of their antennae.

The Reflectionists were aliens, mind-patterns from another planet reborn and endlessly replicated in Kaled flesh. They were incomplete on Skaro; the first transfer from mind to mind had not been perfect, and all subsequent copies of themselves had lacked certain knowledge. But they knew that copies of that first Reflection had been sent in all directions through time and space, along with the one that had found its way to Skaro. And despite the odds, they were willing to try to attract another.

So, they had coated the inside of the Dome with strands of flowmetal that grew like a tracery of frost over the inside. Alien-designed machines nestled here and there in that web, and it all converged on this chamber, where wrist-thick cables ran to the sealed support vat and what grew inside. The entire Kaled Dome was now a giant antennae, reaching out towards space to draw in another Reflection. And at the centre of it was Davros, his mind, his presence.

The Reflectionists had done their best to keep Davros' mind occupied during the time he spent here. They had set up equipment that would let him access the Bunker and the Dome computers simultaneously. And there was food, and fresh clean water, and books.

But Davros was bored. His arms and shoulders were strained from leaning over the keyboard, he found the books either tedious or incomprehensible, and he wasn't hungry or thirsty. Or rather, he didn't hunger for food.

He had a new and whole body. A young body, younger than his mind was by decades. Now he could experiment and test without having to persuade others to do the physical labour; in the last few months he had made more progress in his work than in the prior two years. The Daleks were evolving practically under his eyes, actively working with him and with themselves to create a creature that was more flexible, more dominant, more intelligent than his wildest projections. And further upgrades to their senses and weapons were still being planned.

Of course, there were some other changes that Davros had to adjust to. His new-flush hormones were capable of the most amazing variations.

He remembered the first time he'd peaked in this new body. He had just gone through the operation, transferred his mind out of the raddled shell in its support chair. Surrounded on all sides by medical personnel and the smiling faces of the Reflectionists, he had gone through coordination exercises, tests of sight and hearing and touch. He was offered a shower, and he accepted, with people ready to catch him if he slipped. And he felt the water running through his hair, and somehow that brought it all into focus for him at once.

He could feel! Feel each drop of water running over his scalp, feel it running down his arms - both arms - feel each individual drop as it ran down his chest, burst against his back, trickled down his legs, running down his body, all over his body and he laid hold of himself, between his legs, and they grabbed him as his eyes rolled back in his head and he came. He came, overwhelmed, nearly swooning in their arms.

Remembering that moment right now, he felt a new and yet wonderfully familiar urge. And he saw no reason to restrain it.

"I require entertainment," he ordered rather than said. "Take your clothes off." With neat and precise movements she obeyed, and then leaned back on the edge of the support vat, watching his eyes inspect her.

Looking at her was like looking at a strangely distorted version of what he saw in the mirror every morning. The dark glossy brown of her hair, the shape of her shoulders, the contours of her hands and ears, were familiar to a rather uncanny degree. Esselle's breasts were especially disturbing, because they were wearing his nipples. His nipples, tiny and pink, but set on top of small soft breasts, flattened out a bit by the swell of muscle behind them.

It was an unexpected reminder that she was his clone, grown in a support vat. The Reflectionists had made her small, so that in case of emergency her organs could be transplanted into him. Female, so that she could be hidden among the other women. Then of course they had transplanted all his organs in one go, as it were, and he did not need Esselle. But she had also trained as Commander Nyder's assistant, and the Commander seemed to want to keep her around for some reason. And she was here now, available.

She had marks, though. Her right arm looked like it was wearing a sleeve of some mottled translucent cloth: that was scarring. A Dalek in a state of frenzy had shot at her - at lowest power, for a fraction of an instant. That had been enough to cook her skin quite evenly on that arm; if she had not been wearing gloves at the time, her right hand would have been rendered useless.

He ran his eyes up and down her again, and decided that the scarring was not that off-putting. There were a strange series of red dashes all down the left side of her body, wrapping around her, and he wondered idly how she'd gotten them. "Turn around," he ordered, and she did. He stopped breathing.

He was seeing himself. Himself as a boy, in the Elite Scientific training program, using his brain and his skill and his guile and his words to keep himself at the head of his group. Whippings and hunger and lack of sleep were all standard goads used on the student-trainees, but he was determined to prove that he was above such punishment. One of the instructors had decided to punish him anyway, just to make it clear who was in power. They'd had to tie him down, neck and arms and ankles, before flogging him with a thin cutting strap that left red welts. He'd stared at those welts in a mirror, tight-lipped, every day until they faded.

And here was that young boy's back again, in front of him instead of in a mirror. His shoulders, his back (although admittedly not his arse: Esselle was considerably more generously proportioned there). And running horizontally across it were dozens of red stripes. Whip marks. The red dashes on her side were from the tip of the whip curling around her as it hit, cutting into her.

"What is this?" he finally managed to say.

"It was bootlaces, sir." Her hands hung loosely at her side now. "The Commander wanted to discipline me."

"For what?" Esselle was a matchless assistant, anticipating Nyder's every whim; what could she have done to deserve-

"The Commander wanted to discipline me," she repeated. She tilted her torso forward, reached back with one hand. "Shall I-"

"Never mind," he decided. "Put your clothes back on." He turned away and looked back over the city. While she dressed silently, he remembered his younger self's overwhelming fury at those who had abused him, those he already considered his inferiors. Rage, and fear, that all his intellect could be put at the mercy of another person because of a line of text on a piece of paper, because of a rank, because they were simply stronger or older than he was.

How that fury had consumed him, how he had felt like a thin shell enclosing the boiling lava that was his hatred. It had driven him to excesses and failures, and then to power and revenge. Until he was the one with all the titles, all the power. And now he had the power, still. And he could choose how to use it, and how those under him could as well.

Esselle was a useful member of his staff, but Nyder was irreplaceable. As Nyder's superior it was Davros' duty to defuse the situation and keep Nyder from beating his assistant to death - which he was perfectly capable of doing, with a smile even. Seeing those marks across her back, so similar to his old wounds, had awakened painful memories. Memories that he would be just as happy to remove, and never be reminded of again.

There was a sudden noise, and they both turned their heads to look at the vat. The noise came from inside of it, as though something had moved. Moved where there was nothing to move - except for an empty body, which would not move. Unless it was no longer empty.

"I don't believe it," said Davros. He'd run the math formulae, he knew how cosmically unlikely (literally) it was that the Reflectionists' efforts would ever succeed.

"Oh yes," said Esselle, her fingers flying over the instruments attached to the support vat. Her eyes darted between two computer screens and the direct readouts, and her smile was ear-to-ear. "Yes, yes, yes!"

Tentatively, she reached out and knocked on the vat's side. Tap tap-tap tap tap. And from inside the vat came two distinct knocks.

Panting with excitement, she pried the metal top from the vat, broke the sterile seal and revealed its contents. The contents looked back.

The woman in the vat was awake; her head had raised itself out of the nutrient gelatine layer that filled the bottom of the vat. Her open eyes were a light, almost glowing brown. With an absurd slurping noise she undulated her body free of the gelatine, and knelt upright. Davros stepped back a pace; even in that position, it was obvious that this women was considerably taller than he was.

The woman paused, held up one finger as though asking them to wait, and then bent down over the vat; Davros and Esselle politely looked away as she emptied her lungs and throat with a wet spattering sound. Then she turned back to them and breathed in, for the first time. And spoke.

"---?" said the woman, her pitch seeming to indicate a question in some alien tongue.

Esselle smiled; smiled so wide that he thought her face would break. Her eyes shone, and she replied at length, "---, ------, --------!"

"What are you saying?" he demanded. She ignored him, speaking again to the woman in the tank. "---," she said, "--- Skaro ------!"

The woman swung her face around and stared at him, with eyes that seemed to pierce. In her slightly too-deep voice, she said, "Davros?"

"How do you know my name?" he asked, incredulous.

"---?" she asked Esselle, gesturing with her hand off the floor - about the same height as a seated man. Or half a man, in a life support chair. Then she touched one finger to her own nose, and then pointed to his. Of course: his nose was distinctly the same, young body and old.

"Davros -----," said Esselle. She turned to Davros with her face alight. "Sir, it's her, it's us! It is a clean copy of our Reflection!"

"Why can't she speak Kaled, if you can?"

"We learned Kaled here. But this body had to be empty, a vacuum, to best attract a Reflection. I am just glad," she shivered a bit, "that we attracted the right one." She turned to the control panel, and flicked the switch that permanently disarmed the phosphorus grenades wired along the bottom of the tank. "We might have caught something else."

"If she doesn't know our language, how can she know my name? Did you really come here looking for me?" he demanded of the wet woman. Esselle said something that was probably a translation of his words.

She arched one eyebrow, and said "Davros, ---- Daleks ---."

"We came for you and for the Daleks," confirmed Esselle breathlessly. "Oh, this is wonderful. We need to prepare, we need to do the complete transfer. All the knowledge that we have lost, she bears: we shall give her all of what we know. This is the beginning of everything. We shall have a Prime, a Hive, a-"

"Perhaps we should start with giving her a bath, and some clothes," suggested Davros. The nutrient gel had a sharp, unpleasant meaty smell. He stared at the woman's hair, which was lightening as it dried. It looked as though it was going to be - "Is she going to have red hair?" he said. "What did you splice those genes from?"

"Sir," said Esselle a bit stiffly, "her genes are completely Kaled. Red hair is a recessive. It was a minor matter to have it dominant in this body." Then she looked around the room, and said to herself, "Clothes. Clothes? I knew I forgot something…"

The red-haired woman rose, and stepped carefully out of the vat. Her body would have been electrically exercised while it was being grown and maintained, but she probably wasn't as strong as she looked. Davros hoped not, because she looked like she could pick him up and snap him in half.

The contrast to the slender Esselle was striking. The new woman's breasts were great heavy swells of flesh, and her hips wide - almost unnaturally wide. Long arms and legs like strong pillars balanced off her torso. Her skin was red and raw-looking, from where nutrients and oxygen had been forced through the flesh in suspension. She was like some ancient idol carved out of stone, suddenly become flesh and brought to life. But now that she was all the way out of the vat, he could see that there was something - strange about her overall shape.

He took her by the shoulder and turned her a bit, looking at the way the muscles rippled down from her shoulders to her hips. She permitted this touch, paying attention in turn to his intent examination of her body. There were swollen protrusions in a line down her side, as though little nodules of bone were growing out of her ribs. The way her muscles stood out in a broad band down her spine, the striations of her skin around her shoulders and ears - alien, alien and strange.

She touched the metal cables still running to her head. "---?" she asked Esselle, who had just found a giant black banner that used to hang from the bottom of this chamber during ceremonies. The flag was probably centuries old, but its thin synthetic fabric was good as new.

Esselle looked at the woman, and her eyes suddenly welled with tears. "---," she said sadly, shaking out the banner and helping the woman drape it around herself. It covered her from shoulders to knees, and draped back over one shoulder like a flowing cape.

"And that was?" asked Davros; he could see how irritating it would be to have bilingual people around. The various Skaro languages were close enough that people could understand each other, but this was completely alien. Of course.

"She wants to merge her memories with mine, learn all that we have learned here. Language of course, science, people, and to share what she knows as well. But there isn't an amplifier up here, and," Esselle's voice stuttered. She finally went on, "She should not merge with me first. I am too different, too specialised. Too incomplete." That last word was almost a whine in Esselle' throat.

"Of course she shouldn't," said Davros. "She should merge with me first."

"But-"

"She has the knowledge that I have been denied, she will give it to me. Now." Davros' tone made it clear that this was an order. "She does not need our language. Math is universal. The Triw formulae, for example." Davros grabbed one of the metal cables, pulled the end free from the now useless antennae, and touched it to one of his neural array implants, hidden under his hair. And he closed his eyes. Mustering up the formulae in his mind, and the frustrating blanks that even he could not fill in.

He reached out through the cable, and touched her mind.

Glass, he sensed. Great shapes and forms of glass, like a rack of laboratory glassware. But it extended for all eternity, and it was above and behind him. The glass was filled with a thousand pastel shades of colour, reds and green and oranges, and he could somehow sense that the far reaches of that glass expanse held other colours, colours never seen by the naked eye, densities and weights of colour unimaginable. Somehow he knew that these glass shapes were some abstract representation of knowledge. And light were moving in those shapes, flowing over the clear gleaming surfaces, making uncountable numbers of reflections and counter-reflections within. It as a though every molecule of glass, every flickering light within it, was knowledge. The glass itself was liquid, flowing, moving and combining and recombining. And every light was alive. Every light was an eye, was an eye looking at HIM…!

He jerked the cable loose and stared up at the woman. His mind tried to comprehend endless expanses of information, and could not. She dipped her chin downwards in a strange gesture. "-, Davros."

"Sorry, Davros," Esselle translated.

"I presume," Davros said slowly, his eyes locked on the tall woman's eyes, "that once she has language, once her knowledge is translated, I will be given full access to it?"

"Yes, Davros."

'Then let's get her to the Bunker. Now." Esselle scooped up a different cable, attached to the computer, and touched it to her head: presumably she was telling some other Reflectionist that they needed a transport to meet them. Then all three of them entered the capsule that would slide down the inside of the Dome and deliver them to the surface.

The rotating chairs in the capsule were designed for people of average height; the red-haired woman had to fold her legs to sit down comfortably. Without bothering to hide the focus of his interest, Davros admired her current pose. The strong calves, the ripe thighs, the lush red hair surrounding pouting-

"--," she said, and Esselle translated, "Enjoying the view?"

Davros looked up at the woman's face; she looked back and winked. Apparently some facial expressions crossed the language barrier. Then he looked out the capsule's window, and his eyes widened. There was a stream of electric vehicles racing down the main boulevard that ran down the centre of the Dome, moving to meet the capsule. He was close enough to street level now to see the Daleks keeping pace along with them, and see the long black hair streaming from the passengers' heads. Reflectionists, of course.

The red-haired woman exited the capsule first, under the gaze of a hundred eager eyes. Her hands rose over her head and she flickered her fingers in some elaborate pattern, and spoke a few alien words. The waiting crowd shouted at this, a high shrill eyiyiyiyiii that set Davros' teeth on edge: her gestures and words must have been recognition signals. She tilted her own head back, eyes alight, her shoulders and neck suddenly swelling with tension.

She did not speak. She **roared.**

Davros froze and thought he felt his new heart skip a beat. It was not a sound that a woman would make: it was the cry of some triumphant beast, seeing prey helpless before it. But the Reflectionist crowd howled approval in response.

As he stepped forward in the tall woman's wake, he found himself abruptly pulled off his feet and into an embrace, and wet kisses layered themselves on his face. More embraces followed, as he went from hand to hand into one of the vehicles. Esselle was struggling to keep up with him. Again and again came words of praise, acclaim, appreciation: You found her Davros! Thank you Davros! You called her to us! He was quite damp about the cheeks by the time he finally got a seat, and he had to grab the seat in front of him to keep his balance as the vehicle turned and started racing back through the Dome (at a speed considerably above what was allowed, he would have to speak to them about that) with the Daleks as constant escorts.

"Why is her anatomy so abnormal?" said Davros, loud enough to be heard over the roaring of the engines and the cheering of the women. "Her size, her back and ribs." He could feel the breeze of their passage as coolness on his wet face.

"She is to be our Prime," explained Esselle. "Her mind bears the Thousand Crowns, great datastores of knowledge. No normal humanoid head could hold them all once they were expanded. So she will change."

"Isn't she close to the limit for normal height?" If anything, she probably exceeded normal female height.

"Close to the limit for a biped, sir," said Esselle, smiling up at the taller woman. She had taken the seat closest to her, and snuggled against her like an animal seeking warmth. "But she does not need to remain that way."

Davros was still trying to envision what the Prime was going to become - a giant head in a jar, maybe? - when the convoy swerved to one side, circling the core of the Women's Quarters. They returned to the main road, heading for the tunnel which led from the Dome into Davros' secured laboratories.


	2. Homecoming

When Commander Nyder was urgently called to the Bunker tunnel entrance, he was expecting some stray scientist trying to talk in his ladylove, or perhaps an ill-tempered Dalek. He was not expecting the tallest woman he had ever seen in his life, with Davros on one side and Security Liaison on the other.

The tall woman's hair was reddish, and she was wrapped in an antique Kaled flag that stuck to her wet skin. A flood of Reflectionists circled around the woman, touching her, smiling up at her. She smiled back at them, and they were all babbling in some language that Nyder couldn't understand.

"Commander, did you know about this?" Captain Tane half-shouted over the crowd. He had apparently led the Security detail that had intercepted these unexpected visitors, but he and his men were inadequate to hold them back.

"It's all right, I'll authorise it," said Davros dismissingly.

The moving crowd stopped as the woman in the black flag spread her arms and halted. Perhaps not by coincidence, she had stopped directly in front of Nyder. He looked up from her collarbone (which is where his line-of-sight fell), to her face.

Her face was - strange. It wasn't shaped like a Kaled face, even excepting the weird hair. Her cheekbones were too far apart, her ears too large, her brow and neck oddly distorted. But she also didn't look Thal - not that Davros would have anything to do with a Thal, of course.

The woman looked at him, hands on her hips now. "Nyder," she said, in a voice that rolled. She openly looked him up and down, studying him. There was something brightly eager in her gaze, that reminded him of Davros when he looked over a new piece of laboratory equipment. No woman had ever looked at him like that. It made his skin creep, and it was not entirely a bad feeling.

Then suddenly Security Liaison darted between them, the top of her head blocking off his vision, and looked up at the other woman.

After a long and strangely tense moment, the tall woman smiled. "-", she said in the unknown language, and then strolled past, escorted by beaming Reflectionists. Davros went to Tane, presumably giving him instructions and authorisations.

"You…repeat what she said," said Nyder to his assistant, a bit dazed.

"She said - nervio."

Nyder silently pronounced the word to himself - ner-bi-yoh - and then asked, "And what does nerbiyyoh mean?"

"Cultural co-"

Nyder leaned over and told her, in softly venomous words, exactly what her opinions of cultural contamination meant to him. His gloved hand grasped the back of her neck in silent threat for a moment, cold against her skin. Then he straightened and said, in a normal tone, "It means?"

She cut her eyes at the guards, and answered so lowly that only he could hear. "It's - there isn't a Kaled word for it. It means, ah, the impulse of love to crush and devour - but in a good way." She took in his non-expression, and tried again. "To madly want to hug and squeeze and embrace something, an overwhelming desire to touch as though to absorb, a-"

"She is planning to attack me?" he purred, and his fingers went to the sap hidden in his sleeve.

"Oh no, sir. It was an expression of - admiration."

"It must be a Reflectionist attitude," Nyder decided. "I know nothing like this sensation you describe." He turned on his heel and went to make sure the chattering aliens weren't clotting up the hall somewhere. Davros followed him.

Behind him Security Liaison softly said, "Maybe someday you will know."

* * *

Nyder found himself taken by the arm and moved into a side corridor. There were few men he would tolerate that from, but Davros was one of them, so he went along.

"What happened?" Nyder asked, urgently. "Where did that come from? A Reflectionist experiment?" Unspoken was his other question: had Davros been in danger?

"She's another copy of the Reflection, apparently. An undamaged, original copy. They specifically grew that body as the perfect vessel for her. Their antennae experiment worked."

"So they will get back all the information they lost?" Nyder had endured several bitter lectures from Davros, on what he could only do if he had the complete version of this or that alien knowledge. This giant woman served a real purpose, then. But her arrival meant the aliens would be even more powerful.

"She is to be their Prime. You are," Davros paused, "my Security Commander, who I now find is in the habit of thrashing his assistant as though she was a bit of gristle being tenderised for the food processing plants." Davros' voice was not angry. It was disappointed, and that stung.

And worse yet, he went on. "I've seen you drive men to the brink of suicide using only your words. Flogging Esselle with, with bootlaces." Davros cleared his mouth, as though there was some bad taste on his tongue. "I expected better of you."

Nyder felt something tense inside of him as Davros held up a finger. "I haven't interfered with your disciplinary actions in the past. But if I find another unnecessary bruise on Esselle, I might change that. Understood?"

"Yes, sir." Nyder stood perfectly straight at attention, barely daring to breathe.

"And if you're really overcome by the urge to beat someone up, you can always schedule an additional unarmed combat lesson for me. The last time you nearly put me through the floor, several times-"

Nyder interrupted. "Sir, that's completely different. You requested that training, you-"

"You do not suffer from it?" Davros tilted his head, examined Nyder's features as though they were something interesting he'd just spotted on a microscope slide. "Would it make you happier if I screamed?"

"Never, Davros," said Nyder tensely.

"Well. In regards to Esselle, by my order you will confine your punishments to what is applicable under the Rollback," and Nyder actually winced. The Rollback had reverted all Kaled law to its pre-war state, and the Commander had been rather appalled to discover that this meant he was no longer legally entitled to rape, torture or mutilate the men or the sole woman under his command.

He was allowed to flog her, and he said so.

Davros' lips tightened. "With cause, yes. I find it hard to believe that she would ever give you the slightest cause to discipline her. You should not go about flailing at your subordinates at random; it suggests a distinct lack of self-control."

Nyder's expression was blank, but he withered inside at those words. Self-control, obedience, conformity: those were the centres of his existence. He would follow Davros' orders perfectly, and make himself perfect in the following of them. And at the back of his mind, he wondered if he could actually drive Security Liaison to the brink of suicide with only his words.

He would have to see.

* * *

The Prime-to-be had gone into Laboratory Nineteen. From there she would descend into the underground facility, where an oversized support vat was being prepared to help her body transform into that of a Prime. Memory amplifiers were being arranged in series, so that her mind could merge with three and four Reflectionist women at once. She needed to quickly share her priceless knowledge, while learning everything that had been learned so far of Skaro and its inhabitants. Every woman who could manage it crammed onto the lift with her, or rode the mechanised ladders down into the depths. They were all so eager, so happy, so focussed on what was happening, that none of them noticed that a black-clad figure had stood a bit aside from this parade, and watched it pass by without her.

When they were gone, Esselle drew a deep breath, and considered. What she wanted right now was someone to cry on, but nobody seemed to be forthcoming.

A sister? At this time of all times she did not want to go cry on one of her own sisters, did not want to taint their celebration with her misery. And the Kaleds - well, they would not understand. Maybe Ravon would, but he was far away, in the Dome. And she selfishly wanted to get her crying finished now.

She found a dark corner that was not being used. She curled up on the floor, forehead to knees, and cried. Cried hard and fast and as quietly as possible, to get it over with and done.

A Prime. She'll be tall, she told herself. And wide. Hexapedal at the least, and probably better. She would have a proper pelt, a dozen twining arms, and long elegant taloned legs to send her drifting across floors and up walls and wherever she wanted. She would be sculpture made flesh, a triumph of bio-editing enclosing the Thousand Crowns. She would be beautiful, and caring, and wise.

She would have children, a hundred, a thousand, and every one of them one of us. And all of us already decanted will also call her mother, even as we called Davros our father. She will be our Prime.

She would be what Esselle could never be.

As she mourned, a deeply self-analytical portion of her mind rose, Reflectionist-wise, and examined the distortions built into her personality. That mask of madness that lay between her and the world, allowing her to work and live with madmen and understand them. Her personality was bearing up under the stress; the mask was still a separate thing. She was still whole. If this had not been the case, she would have reported it to her sisters, and asked that her personality be decompiled and rebuilt, in order to preserve her integrity. But she was well - at least, as well as she could be within her peculiar limits. And that part of her retreated, leaving behind featherings of self-pity.

She still wept. There was another reason for her tears, a far more simple reason. Davros had rejected her. As casually as he might put aside a bit of food that did not please him, a piece of glassware that was not up to his standards. It was probably her body's resemblance to his, or maybe her scars: she could of course have the scars removed, but sometimes - sometimes Nyder would take her arm and pull back the sleeve of her uniform with one finger, just enough to see those scars and confirm that she was Security Liaison Esselle, not one of her identical sisters. And that was the only time he touched her, except to threaten or to strike her.

These men still have so far to go, she thought to herself. So terribly far. And until they make the passage from madness to sanity, from sickness to health, I cannot follow them.

"Are you malfunctioning?" grated a Dalek voice. Startled, she lifted her reddened face from her knees. A Dalek was staring down at her.

She sniffed, and stood up. As she stepped out of the corner, she said in her habitual flat voice, rather thicker than usual, "I am not malfunctioning. I am in emotional distress which I am attempting to express from my system." Talking to the Daleks about emotions was like talking to a fish about flying.

The Dalek did not move. "You are capable of chemically correcting this stress."

Esselle replied, "The emotional distress is causing levels of thought-intensity which I am using to study the reason for my distress."

"Halt," ordered the Dalek as she turned to go. "I require further definition."

Without turning to look, Esselle said, "I am distressed because I have thought-intensity that I fear will never be expressed to its fullest: but I would rather have this intensity, than never know it. I grieve, and…I weep for joy, that I feel this grief."

Blotting her rather runny nose, she slunk away. The Dalek rolled in the opposite direction, and pondered this new definition of emotion.

As Esselle rounded the corner on her way back to the main laboratory, she came face to face with Davros. "Esselle," he said at the sight of her; he did not seem to notice her flustered state. "I will require your report on when your - Prime, I think you called her? - is ready to share her knowledge."

She straightened. "Understood, sir." To herself Esselle made a note, that Projectionist was going to have to be briefed. Projectionist had the talent of seeing permutations of the future, and several times she had warned her sisters that giving Davros this or that piece of knowledge would have dire side effects. Like him blowing up the planet.

"And I've given orders that Commander Nyder is to confine his punishment of you to the verbal. You will please not abuse his leniency, or take it for permissiveness. I may change my mind."

She recoiled inside. Nyder's disdain, his sneers and insults - they were far worse for her to bear than mere blows. Nyder's frown was sharper than any whip. But outside she gave Davros a polite smile and said, "Thank you, sir."

As she walked on, a hand stopped her. It was Sela, a bit breathless, and she said, "She wants you." No need to ask who she was; Sela could only mean the Prime-to-be. "For the knowledge share. You are to be one of the first, she insists on it."

Esselle blinked. "She does?"

Sela nodded, tugging her arm.

"Oh," said Esselle happily, and went.

**Author's Note:**

> 'Shave and a Haircut - Two Bits' is apparently the universal JHive/Reflectionist knock-code.


End file.
